Biography
The Lovecraftsman analyzes 170 objects left at his grave.
At 41% the proportion of rocks lead all the rest. *** Also on the subject of his grave, in
the 2006 article "I Am Providence: The City That Made H.P. Lovecraft,"
Robert Anasi wrote "Lovecraft's 'I am Providence'
memorial marker has been removed". I suppose that was
temporary.
Conferences
"Lovecraft, Deleuze and Media Studies: The First international CYCLONOPEDIA SYMPOSIUM" was to be
held in New York City. It is a "a one-day symposium
dedicated to the inter-relations between Lovecraftian fear/horror/terror, Deleuze's nomad 1000
Plateaus, and the Mille-feuilles/leafs/lepe[r]s of
contemporary Media Studies."
Cons
Will Hart has pdf'ed
the program (with autographs) of the 2011 Mythoscon.
Language
"H.P. Lovecraft's 10 Favorite Words and a
Free Lovecraft eBook" are available at the Tor site.
An analysis of his stories shows that the top 3 words are: (1) Hideous - 260; (2)
Faint (ed/ing) - 189; (3)
Nameless - 157
Movies
Lengthily writing about Guillermo del Toro in the 7 February 2011 New Yorker, a Daniel Zalewski refers to his coming "adaptation of a grandly ridiculous H. P. Lovecraft novella, At the Mountains of Madness." *** On the Houston Press blog filmmakers Sean Branney and Andrew Leman talk about their new The Whisperer in Darkness.
Music
It appears that in the 1970's, French
composer Tristan Murail wrote a piece entitled
"Lovecraft."
Publications
Now available: Lovecraft eZine: A Free Online Magazine
Featuring Lovecraftian Horror
Publishing
Arkham House publisher and daughter of August Derleth, April Derleth died on 21 March.
Television
In Fantastic
Television (1977) by Gary Gerani with Paul H.
Schulman, one learns that the Kolchak episode "Horror in the Heights" is a
"tribute" by Hammer Films screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster to HPL. The
story concerns a monster that can take on the shape of someone the victim
trusts (p. 139). *** Amy H. Sturgis (Redecorating Middle-Earth in Early Lovecraft. Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving)
will be writing an essay for a forthcoming collection on Fringe and its debt to HPL and others. *** A two-part episode of Supernatural is entitled "The Haunter of
the Dark."
Theater
Things
at the Doorstep: An Evening of Horror Based on the Works of H.P. Lovecraft
by Greg Oliver Bodine & Nat Cassidy played at
Manhattan Theatre Source in New York. It featured a dramatization of "The Hound"
and "I Am Providence," which "is a series of Lovecraftian adaptations and
musings that highlight the master's insights into our own ephemeral wants and
fears." *** Playing
at Broadway's Kraine Theatre the H.P. Lovecraft Festival was presented by Radiotheatre in March and April.
Program A had "Pickman's Model," "Dagon," "From Beyond," and "The Beast in the
Cave"; program B featured "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Music of Erich Zann."
What's more, for the fall of 2011 "Dan Bianchi has adapted and scored for the
stage 50 of Lovecraft's greatest literary works," though presumably they all
won't be featured in one swoop.
*** Via Yog-Sothoth.com:
The
UK's First Live Cabaret Celebrating the Eldritch Works of HP Lovecraft . Live
Lovecraft Readings: performed by The Fitzrovia Radio
Hour - direct from the West End and featured many times on BBC Radio 4. Laughs with Lovecraft: HP Lovebox - a
tentacle-headed crooner wearing a natty suit and belting out indie hits. like
Frank Sinatra from Lovecraft's darkest nightmare. Lovecraft Book Launch:
SelfMadeHero's latest graphic novel based on the
short stories of HP Lovecraft, The Lovecraft Anthology: Volume I. With
exclusive guests! Exclusive Film Screenings , Quiz And
Great Music! Hosted by Chris Lackey, HP Lovecraft expert and co-host of the HP
Lovecraft Literary Podcast
*** As of March, Re-Animator, the Musical is playing in Los Angeles. Co-writers of
the work are Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, and William J. Norris.
Toys &c
There's a Peeping Cthulhu Suction Cup
Plush, of which Technabob says "It's the combination
of things, the cuteness of the plush toy, the fact that Cthulhu was never meant
to be cute, and the fact that most people driving behind you will have no idea
what the hell it is that makes this one a winner."
Influence
"A Day in the Life of a Lovecraftian"
incorporates HPL titles within a short narrative. *** For
the Kindle and the Nook author Bryan W. Alaspa has
available the e-book Mythos: A Thriller.
*** According to reviewer Michael Dirda, portions of the satiric Pym (Spiegel & Grau,
2011) by Mat Johnson mixes The Narrative
of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket with its "sequels," Jules Verne's The Sphinx of the Ice Fields and At the Mountains of Madness.
Famous Monsters of Filmland (no. 31, December 1964)
"The Dunwich Horror (Lovecraft)" is
announced under "The Monster Eye," as is The
Shuttered Room, but without any attribution.
FM 32 (March
1965)
My suspicious mind finds under the
humorless "Credits and Acknowledgments" the name of "Herb West." *** Answer to
a letter mentions that photos of Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber appeared in the
magazine Look (8 September 1964) for
an article "Monsters: Why our Children are Wild for Horror Movies, TV &
Games." *** A letter offering details about the historical Dracula comes from
Joanna Russ, whose "My Boat" would be one of the Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Arkham House,
1990). Among her essays is "On the Fascination of Horror Stories, Including
Lovecraft's."
FM 33 (May
1965)
"Monster Mail Call" has a letter from
Steve Utley, who I presume to be the future Steven Utley of the story "Black as
the Pit, from Pole to Pole" in Eternal
Lovecraft: The Persistence of HPL in Popular Culture (Golden Gryphon Press,
1998) edited by Jim Turner. *** At a Count Dracula Society meeting FM photographer Walter J. Daugherty
assembled an hour-long picture-program about HPL that was narrated on tape by
Fritz Leiber; 150 hours went into its preparation.
Lovecraft Annual (no. 4, 2010)
I'm going through the published
correspondence with Carl F. Strauch. There's HPL's unannotated (and unconsciously punning) statement, "Thanks
very much for the Bechtel cuttings," where news accounts of cabalistic wounds on
a murder victim remind HPL of the fiction of Blackwood and Machen (25 Feb.
1932, p. 68). According to the New York
Times (21 Jan. 1932), "Peculiar cabalistic marks, carved on the scalp of
Norman R. Bechtel ... who was found dying on a Germantown [Pa.] estate early
today led the police tonight to believe his murderer was a homicidal maniac...
The possibility that the peculiar markings might have been those of some
strange secret society or cult led investigators to hunt indications of
Bechtel's membership in such organizations. They found none."
Samuel Loveman
I was briefly able to use a database of
old newspapers thanks to its publisher Readex. I
discovered in the Cleveland Plain Dealer
(13 March 1923) that a local organization called the Colophon Club had voted
for something like the six greatest stories in the world. One of the nominees
was "Hypnos," which was disqualified because it had not yet been published. Further digging disclosed that in 1924 this club privately-printed A Round-Table in Poictesme:
A Symposium, edited By Don Bregenzer and Samuel
Loveman.
C.
L. Moore
Robert A. Heinlein enjoyed the Northwest
Smith stories by C. L. Moore that appeared in Weird Tales. As a matter of fact he unwittingly took the title of
his story "The Green Hills of Earth" from "Shambleau."
He had thought that the words came from a story by Henry Kuttner, but had been
unable to locate it; then a friend discovered the origin of the title. (See Robert A. Heinlein [Tor, 2010] by
William H. Patterson, Jr., page 403.)
Robert W. Chambers
"Steve stared at him and said tonelessly:
'The King in Yellow. I read a book with that title once.'" Quoted
from "The King in Yellow" by Raymond Chandler.
"The Haunter of the Dark"
In this story "The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it [the Haunter] a temple with a
windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all
monuments and records." According to Wikipedia, the Latin phrase "damnatio memoriae" (i.e.,
"damnation of memory") was the erasing from remembrance of Roman
elites and emperors after their death. While this
practice of trying to un-person someone and oust him from historical records
can be found in other places and times, it is plausible that HPL learned of
this through his familiarity with Roman history and ways. In the case of Nephren-Ka, I gather the motive was less political than
theological and moral.
RIP AtMoM
Unless your brain has been in a canister
on the planet Yuggoth (I'm looking at you, Henry Akeley) you'll know that
Guillermo del Toro's hotly anticipated Lovecraft adaptation is not to be-at
least through Universal, the studio that was to finance it. Within a 24-hour
period I read that the movie was finally to be produced, then the downright
pessimistic and too true announcement that it wouldn't be. L
While I feel the movie would not have very
closely represented Lovecraft, it would have been very well crafted and very
imaginative, a del Toro-ian
rather than Lovecraftian work. My guess is that it would have been heavy on special effects, whereas this should
have been sacrificed for what is the core of a Lovecraft story and constantly
overlooked in adaptations-atmospheric
effects. As HPL said in 1935, "Atmosphere, not action, is the thing to
cultivate in the wonder story."
Tom Cruise was rumored to star in the
movie, and this was a mistake. Since "the true 'hero' of a marvel tale is not
any human being, but simply a set of phenomena" a major actor would point the
story to himself, whereas he should be in the background and serve as a
reaction to the strangeness.
Aside from del
Toro, other losers in the movie-that-is-not-to-be is foremost HPL, who would be
exposed to a pool of additional readers. If del Toro
wanted expert advice from Lovecraftians, they too are
out of the picture (in a manner of speaking). Nor will there
be licensing of pet shoggoths, or whatever.
Mailing 154
Graeme:
Vol Molesworth has 36
entries in the WorldCat bibliographic database,
beginning with a co-authorship in the 1960 journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and including a number of fantasy
works, as spoken of in your publication. *** The name sounds like a punning
pseudonym-i.e., "vole" and "mole," two small mammals.
Ken:
Concerning that photograph, it would be splendid if the cat-in-arms was the
black cat that subsequently found fictional immortality and name-notoriety in
"The Rats in the Walls." I wonder where HPL was. *** You dispute Arkham House
"as a 'ghetto' specialty publisher" because of its as-good-as mainstream
publisher sales and its physical quality. To typically play the contrarian, I
maintain that AH was pre-eminently a specialty publisher because of its subject
matter and audience. *** One problem I found with the earlier version of I Am Providence is S.T.'s overabundance
of value judgments, sometimes dealing with non-Lovecraft matters as aesthetics
of architecture and language.
Don
and Mollie: In reflecting on the
attitude of Scrooge's old girlfriend, you write "Odd, that anyone would be
'content' to be poor." Doctor Johnson said something to the effect that volumes
have been written why people should be satisfied with being poor, but nothing
is written about why people should be satisfied with being rich (i.e., nobody
has to justify the benefits of money). Belle and Fezziwig
represent the un-Scrooge, so such characters should be judged in moral and
symbolic terms, not human ones.
T.R.:
A very fine job of giving a more realistic and off-a-pedestal approach to HPL's understanding of physics-and by implication, his
objectivity-disillusioning as it may be. I wonder how typical was Lovecraft's
flawed knowledge and how it compared with science fictional contemporaries,
such as E.E. Smith (degrees in chemical engineering) or S. Fowler Wright or
John Taine (mathematician)? Yet the biases of his knowledge may have left alone
his artistic side, so a story such as "The Dreams in the Witch House" would
have remained verisimilitudinous.
Mark:
The short stories I've read by Paul Ernst I've enjoyed.
Martin:
That's an interesting selective memory of Julius Schwartz about HPL: "very tall
and did all the talking." Since the former is in error--I'd call him average
height--the latter is suspect, though intriguing. How much did he contribute to
a conversation, i.e., did he dominate it? *** At a guess, the first mention of
HPL's name in print would be his birth certificate or birth announcement, if
such there was back then. Or maybe a mention in the newspaper of kids enrolled
in elementary school.
John
H.: It is interesting to learn of Dr. Wertham's
appreciation of Lovecraft's fiction, even though he was adapted by Wetham's bęte noire E.C. Comics. Do you know where you got
that information about the doctor?
Fred:
Book culture and cyberculture overlap. For example, a
book's text can be read online. The format may be different, but the
information is the same. The text will change when it is able to take advantage
of online potentials--sound, pictures, and more becoming part of the narrative.
Leigh: After reading that parody by
Jack Sharkey you provided in Playboy
of HPL and other horror writers, I looked for information about the author. Aside
from appearances in science fiction magazines and anthologies, apparently he
wrote a number of plays in the same vein: The
Picture of Dorian Gray: A Musical Drama (1982); Jekyll Hydes Again!:
A Screwball Musical (1984); Wilkie Collins' Classic
Tale The Woman in White! : A Cautionary Chronicle of Monstrous Evil and Blackhearted Villainy in Song & Dance (1987); Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra:
A Musical Victorian Spoof Suggested by the Writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(1987); and Cinderella Meets the Wolfman!: A Howlingly
Funny Musical Spoof (1988). *** In one of my older Playboys (August 1964) I found a story by Arthur C. Clarke, "The
Shining Ones." Whether it has Lovecraftian elements I'll leave to the reader.
The narrator goes down in a bathysphere and discovers intelligent small squid.
In a later trip, as he finds a squid of inconceivable size, his story is cut
off in mid-sentence. The concept of something huge and terrible has a
Lovecraftian atmosphere, and the abrupt ending brings to mind "Dagon" or
Hodgson's The House on the Borderland--and
for the movie buff in you, that scene in The
Beast from 20'000 Fathoms where the professor in the bathysphere is
similarly interrupted by a monster.
S.T.:
It is no more than a coincidence, but in Lovecraft's list of the seven best
horror tales, four have a color in their titles: "The White Powder," "The White
People," "The Black Seal," and "The Yellow Sign."
Of Those Who Would Be HPL
Boswell had this to say of Samuel
Johnson's imitators, and it is as true for Lovecraft's. "Yet whatever merit
there may be in any imitations of Johnson's style, every good judge must see
that they are obviously different from the original; for all of them are either
deficient in its force, or overloaded with its
peculiarities; and the powerful sentiment to which it is suited is not to be
found."
Hallowe'en on TCM
Always one to let a task slip through my
fingers, I have for two years been meaning to mention the showing on Hallowe'en
2008 of four Lovecraft movies on the best of television channels, Turner
Classic Movies. The first, The Haunted
Palace, was the most successful and had one wonderful Lovecraftian line. It
is spoken by Vincent Price (as Joseph Curwen), when he admits that he does
terrible things for gods whose purpose is unfathomable, suggesting that even a
warlock has limits to his knowledge. The second (Die, Monster, Die [1965] from "The Colour out of Space") starred
Boris Karloff and Nick Adams, two actors I enjoy, but this was the weakest of
the movies shown. The best scene was the discovery in a building of a mutated
menagerie. The last time I saw the third, The
Shuttered Room (1966), was when it was originally shown in the movie house.
It's not Lovecraft nor Derleth nor a horror movie, save thinly. A couple comes
to an island where the woman is menaced by a tough (Oliver Reed). The concept
of someone locked in a room is very much secondary. Another one that I saw when
it had originally come out, The Dunwich
Horror (1970) was a partial success, and showcased some well-known actors
(Ed Begley, Sam Jaffee, Dean
Stockwell). The greatest disappointment was the
rending of Wilbur's sibling, followed by the emphasis of the story on a kind of
romance with Sandra Dee.
Philadelphia
A library conference brought me to Philadelphia,
home of the United Amateur Press Association. In 1928 HPL visited "the colonial
shades of old Philadelphia [which he] survey'd with
undiminished affection." He also calls it "that venerable and favourite town." While there I visited the Edgar Allan Poe
National Historic Site, called by HPL "a pleasant brick cottage of three
stories." Also: "Of the Poe houses still standing, none comes to life more
vividly as a typical home than this unpretentious cottage" (all quotes from Collected Essays). If, like me, you go
on a tour of the house, you'll be shown in an upper story the replica of a
heart underneath the floorboards and, in the cellar (in a recess), a toy black
cat whose eyes light up; both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" were apparently
published here while Poe was in residence. The exhibits included one that named
authors who reflected his influence. Among these were Arthur Conan Doyle,
Stephen King, and (gag me) "Lemony Snicket." Since
there was no acknowledgement of HPL, I scribbled about this omission in the
small comment section of the visitor guest book.
I'll add that the statue of a raven stands
in the Poe garden. Across the street from the house, on the side of a sizable
building, was an expert and vivid mural of Poe along with a quotation from
"Hop-Frog" ("I never knew any one so keenly alive to a joke [etc.]"). Another
day I passed by the Walnut Street Theatre, founded the same year that Poe was
born and remains America's oldest continually operating one (202nd
season!). It dramatized "The Gold-Bug" the year of its publication, 1843.
Returning from the Poe visit I passed the
building of the Philadelphia Police Department. I reflected that dropping the
letters "lic" from "Police" results in the
Philadelphia Poe Department. Maybe this investigates the Rue Morgue murders or
the aforementioned tell-tale heart case. It would fit in with other
investigative units-Charles Stross's Laundry, Hellboy's Bureau
of Paranormal Research and Defense, Hodgson's Carnacki,
etc.
I later went to the graveyard wherein is
the tomb of Benjamin Franklin, whose remains are stolen in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. To do so, the ghouls would have
had to lift an expansive slab over the resting place of him and his wife; and
many a penny lies on it, perhaps as a solicitation for good luck or to
acknowledge "a penny saved is a penny earned." The cemetery preservation association
earns between $3-4,000 yearly from these minute contributions. Though the
cemetery (Christ Church Burial Ground) is small, it contains about 4,000
bodies. That is possible because of the cemetery's depth. In one instance the roots of a tree had broken into a large,
deep vault below and tumbled those who were interred. (Think of "The Unnameable": "I had made a fantastic remark about the
spectral and unmentionable nourishment which the colossal roots must be sucking
in from that hoary, charnel earth.") Despite the crowding, one plot yet remains
for a widower who had been involved with the cemetery.
Last, I had an enjoyable time at the Philadelphia
Academy of Natural Sciences, workplace of paleontologists Joseph Leidy and
Edward Drinker Cope, and home of the first mounted dinosaur skeleton, whose
casts are on display.
A Proposal for His Narratives
Several issues back I disagreed about
welcoming another Lovecraft collection (The
Fiction: Complete and Unabridged), maintaining the field was swollen with
re-packagings of his writing. Yet, there is another,
and fresh, way of presenting his work. Collect only that which tells a
story-something made up with a beginning, middle, and end.
Beyond fiction this would encompass
excerpts from his letters and his poetry (nothing in his essays presently comes
to mind). August Derleth already anticipated this in Dreams and Fancies (1962), but it was not exhaustive and he left
out most fiction and all poems. So, in the collection I propose you'd find both
"The Statement of Randolph Carter" and the dream that inspired it. Among poems
would be "Psychopompos" and others which could be read
as stories. However, the space for accommodation would require a multi-volume
set.
Thanks for reading the 3,792
words of the 68th issue of The Criticaster (Spring
2010, mailing 154th for the
Esoteric Order of Dagon) by Steve Walker. Eventually published on the Net as The
Limbonaut (no 39).